the slow fade of love
by vega-de-la-lyre
Summary: She’s never met anyone else with the ability to make her feel so infuriatingly small and inadequate, a little girl wobbling in her mother’s too-big heels. Blair and Chuck; futurefic.


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he said: the slow fade of love  
and its mist might choke you  
it's my gradual descent into a life i never meant  
it's the slow fade of love  
{**a man/me/then jim**; _rilo kiley._}

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"And Blair, really, dear, we're all dying to know — when might we be expecting a little baby Bass?"

The woman smiles pleasantly up at Blair, who sits suddenly numb in her chair. Which shouldn't happen: it's not that difficult a question to answer. Sure, it might be malicious and mean spirited — Chuck and Blair have been married five years, with no offspring in sight, who's to say they can't have a baby, and it's not some horrifically touchy subject? _Bitch_ — but Blair is a deft hand at navigating these icy waters and her mother's training has instilled in her a perfect deflect-and-avoid strategy for every awkward social situation. So she doesn't know why she just sits in her chair, blinking stupidly at the curious and smirking women who face her around the table.

Chuck, standing at her shoulder, brushes the question off easily; she doesn't hear what he says, she's sitting still with a fragile smile fixed on her face, but the women all laugh in that false indifferent fashion Blair's worked hard to cultivate all her life and he takes her hand and nudges at her to stand, forcing her frozen limbs into action. He steers her away from the table lightly and wordlessly, so she guesses that whatever he said was appropriately charming and evasive and vaguely threatening: Chuck's good for that sort of thing.

Later, in the elevator, she leans against the back wall and stares at the ceiling, swallowing hard. When the door closes Chuck turns and takes her hand, and for a moment her breath catches in her throat at this oddly gentle gesture but he just turns her hand over and she watches, heart in her throat, as he brushes a thumb across the rough calloused skin of her knuckles, the crescent-shaped ridges left by her teeth treacherous signs of her guilt. Her fingers curl reflexively around his, the slim gold wedding band on his ring finger biting cold into her palm, and raising an eyebrow slightly he lets go of her hand.

Her stomach plummets sickeningly. She eyes him, bracing herself for whatever's coming, and he shakes his head. "For God's sake, Blair," he says softly, pityingly, his dark eyes shadowed; "who would ever trust you to look after another living creature when you can't even take care of yourself?"

The edge of cruelty in his voice could never come close to measuring up to the loathing she feels for herself. Blair opens her mouth and then shuts it uselessly; her hands close into fists on the fine silk of her gown — to stop herself from trembling or from slapping him, raking her sharp nails across his face, she doesn't know which — and she turns to face the elevator doors unblinkingly, praying for them to open as she ignores the itching at the back of her neck which is his steady gaze fixed on her.

"What," Chuck says levelly, "did you think I haven't noticed what you've been doing? The antidepressants not cutting it anymore?"

"Shut up, Chuck," is all she can think of to say. The doors slide open soundlessly, and she gathers her dress to stalk to her room, but he grabs her elbow and she turns back to him furiously. "_What_."

"Blair," he says, and there's something different in his eyes, something earnest and anxious. "I'm serious. You need help. And I realise I'm about the least qualified person to help, so…"

He trails off and opens one hand in a gesture of conciliation or uncertainty. Or both. He gets these ideas sometimes, she thinks, that after all this time their ill natures might miraculously cancel each other out, that through sheer willpower they can make each other better —

She blinks, eyes hot and prickling. "Don't be silly, Chuck," she says, and smiles brilliantly, pulling herself away from him. "I'm fine! Really, I am. It's just stress, that's all. I'm fine."

"Like hell you are — "

"I don't need your help, Chuck," she says, almost spitting the words. "Drop it."

At that, his face smoothes, goes impassive and curiously blank. "If that's how you want it," he says, unbuttoning his cufflinks, "I'll leave you to your delusions."

_Coward_, she thinks as he drops them with a clink on the side table and begins to loosen his tie. She doesn't want him to push the subject, she really doesn't, but it still hurts to se him abandon the fight so easily where it used to be so effortless to needle him into an argument, a vicious and blissfully distracting brawl. Now he refuses to be goaded: he's grown up, finally, and maybe she hasn't yet, and it's like she's screaming into an empty room.

"I'm flying to Moscow first thing in the morning," he says. "I won't wake you."

At that it takes all her self-control not to bare her teeth at him like an animal. _And you wonder why I lash out,_ she thinks, _you wonder why sometimes I just can't hold myself together?_ She still loves him. She does, and God help her, she knows that it's her sick fate to love him all her life. But she's never met anyone else with the ability to make her feel so infuriatingly small and inadequate, a little girl wobbling in her mother's too-big heels, and for a brief second she hates Chuck with all her heart as she leans in and kisses him on the cheek.

"Goodnight, Charles," she says, and heads to her dressing room. "Do try to curb your more sociopathic tendencies when you're gone, will you?"

"Anything for you, Mrs Bass," he says to her back; she can hear the smirk in his voice, but the banter is empty and weak and she mouths _Waldorf-Bass, it's Waldorf-Bass, you asshole_ to herself as she closes the door and tugs the pearls viciously out of her ears, because if the fight is gone, then what do they have, really?

That night, when she goes to sleep alone for the fifty-third night in a row in her big empty bed, her hands clutch briefly, white-knuckled, at crisp new sheets in fury and heartache.

But she does not cry.


End file.
